08/10/2026
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❤️WILLIAMSPORT HISTORY
Sallie Ann Jarrett 1861-1865: The Civil War Hero Dog Who Walked the Streets of Williamsport 🦮🇺🇸❤️
Sallie Ann Jarrett was a tiny, four-week-old brindle, Staffordshire Pitbull terrier puppy when she was given to the 11th Pennsylvania Infantry in the spring of 1861 to serve as the regiment’s mascot. Colonel Richard Coulter described her as “a brindle, bull-terrier, of a fine breed.” She was given to Captain William R. Terry of Company I in May of that year by a resident of West Chester, Pennsylvania, where the regiment was training at Camp Wayne. The soldiers named the little pup in honor of two people: a young woman they admired named Sallie Ann and their original commanding officer, Colonel Phaon Jarrett.
From the beginning, Sallie displayed an extraordinary devotion to the soldiers. She quickly became inseparable from the men of the 11th Pennsylvania, who regarded her not simply as a mascot but as one of their own. Twice she marched with the regiment in review before President Abraham Lincoln, who, according to regimental account, “tipped his hat to her.”
Sallie’s loyalty followed the men far beyond camp and parade ground. She marched into battle with “her boys,” often taking her place near the front lines and barking furiously at the enemy. Over the course of the war, she accompanied the regiment through some of the bloodiest engagements of the Civil War, including Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg.
Sallie’s story also has a special connection to Williamsport.
In late July and early August 1861, the 11th Pennsylvania came to Williamsport to help guard the Potomac River crossings, including the ferry and the heights around Doubleday Hill. Sallie was there with them, a puppy barely five months old. One can easily imagine the young brindle dog walking Williamsport’s streets alongside the soldiers, becoming a familiar sight to townspeople and receiving more than a few affectionate pats along the way. During this period, she was also with the regiment during the first skirmish at Falling Waters.
But Sallie’s most remarkable story came two years later at Gettysburg.
During the desperate fighting of July 1, 1863, Sallie became separated from the 11th Pennsylvania as the regiment was forced from the battlefield. In the confusion, the soldiers feared that their beloved companion had been killed. When men of the regiment returned to the battlefield several days later, however, they discovered Sallie alive but weak from hunger, thirst, and exhaustion.
She had refused to abandon her men.
For days, Sallie had remained among the wounded and dead of the 11th Pennsylvania, standing guard over the soldiers she had followed into battle. Regimental accounts remembered her protecting wounded men even as the battle raged around them. According to soldiers’ recollections, Sallie also drove away farm hogs that wandered onto the battlefield and threatened to eat helpless wounded men. Through it all, she remained at her post until members of her regiment returned.
Reunited with “her boys,” Sallie continued with the 11th Pennsylvania as the Army of the Potomac pursued Robert E. Lee’s retreating Confederate army toward the Potomac, and once again toward Williamsport.
Her service was not without injury. During the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in May 1864, Sallie was shot in the neck. She was treated, recovered, and returned to the regiment, continuing to march beside the soldiers to whom she had devoted nearly her entire life.
Then, on February 6, 1865, just two months before the war’s end, Sallie’s journey came to an end.
During the Union advance at Hatcher’s Run, Virginia, Sallie was struck in the head by a Confederate bullet and killed. Despite the heavy enemy fire around them, several soldiers laid aside their arms long enough to bury her on the battlefield. They could not bear to leave behind the little dog who, at Gettysburg and throughout years of war, had refused to leave them behind.
Twenty-five years later, when veterans of the 11th Pennsylvania erected their monument on the Gettysburg battlefield in 1890, they made certain that Sallie would be there with them forever. At the base of the monument lies the bronze figure of a small brindle Pitbull terrier, resting faithfully beneath the feet of the soldiers she loved.
Some hero’s walk on four legs.
